PROBLEM:
The feature of all mac apps that I use the most is search.
Specifically find selection & find again. I use that feature to step
through every instance of that selection throughout my code. One
feature that I would love to see is a back button for selections.
Every time you do a search or scroll through your document & select
something, to get back to the last thing you were working on you have
to have set a bookmark & remember which bookmark you were last
looking at, or you have to manually find that place in your code again.
I work on other peoples old janky ASP 'classic' and quickly slapped
together ASP.NET code on a deadline. Anything to help me make quick
work of navigating through the (massive mountain of fetid spaghetti)
code the better.
SOLUTION:
If there was a way for the program to note every time you move the
selection more than 'a little bit' & log that information
sequentially, all you'd have to do to get back to what you were last
looking at would be to hit the back button. bam bam... done, no
thinking.
I know the system is extremely extensible, i'm sure there is some way
for me to 'roll my own' system for doing something similar.
(1) I'd need a command to get the current input location row & column
(2) log that information somewhere
(3) a command to get the last input location from 'wherever' and then
(4) a command to set the input location to 'that location'
??? I think i could figure all this out with applescript and bbedit,
but i'm still rather green when it comes to hard-core UNIX hacking.
Anyone have any suggestions? ??
IDEA: Maybe a quickie version of it would be to undo the last edit,
which would take me back to the last place I was, but then redo my
last action without moving the input location so I don't lost any
work. hmm...
Maybe there's another solution to my problems that i haven't
considered. What does everyone else do?